January 2018 – Note From The President

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season and trust everyone had safe travels during this time. As mentioned during our holiday diner we have several agenda items we are planning on doing this year. One of these items was to provide more information to our families as we work on these accomplishments. We felt that a blog would be a good way for me to get information out to everyone. I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts.
Our board is comprised of all volunteers and everything we get accomplished is done after our normal working hours. Sometimes we get our agenda items accomplished quickly other times it takes longer than expected but please remember that we are always working for you.

I had a great time at the holiday party, I would like to thank Jessie and Karen for all their hard work getting this event planned to allow all of us a chance to come together. I was able sit down and visit with everyone which was so great for me. As I had mentioned at the holiday party, this is my favorite event we host because it allows me to talk with everyone, get caught up on changes in your lives, and brag about our kids. The Buddy Walk is a great event but I am always running from one place to the next and trying to enjoy some of my time with Wyatt that I don’t get as much time with you. We always review our events and see what went well and what can be improved. Out of this review we had some internal areas we can improve on but the big area we had for improvement was our location. We do feel that we are just about to outgrow the facility at the bowling alley and will be exploring other options to host the holiday diner this December. We all agreed and from feedback we received at the diner that everyone enjoyed themselves and it was a success. Thank you all for coming. We always love to hear from our families, if you have suggestions on how we can improve our holiday party or have a great idea for a venue please let me know.

As we move forward, one of our current priority is getting the Logan Charles award finalized. We hope to have the application completed by Monday January 15th and then provide to the Charles family to review. Travis Jette is also working on getting our website updated with a section for this award. We will let everyone know when it is completed and we hope everyone submits an application.

We are still working out some of the final details with the MTDSA chapter in Kalispell, Sarah Reynolds has just been amazing and I appreciate all that she has done. As we finalize things on that front we will provide more information on our website, this blog and other social media sites. TwitterFacebook

We have our Valentine’s Day dance at the YMCA on February 9th, this is open to all individuals. Rachelle and Jessie are organizing this event. We will have information on our website, Facebook, etc. soon.

We continue to improve our processes every year, we currently have a Buddy Walk committee but this year we are working on setting up additional committees to help with items such as social media, fundraising and advocacy to name a few. If anyone would like to get more involved please send me (philip@mtdsa.org) or Rachelle (rachelle@mtdsa.org) an email with the area you would like to help. We would love to get more people involved as we move forward and grow.

Sam Foshag is working on finalizing our 2017 financial information so I don’t have anything to report until she closes the books. I did want to let everyone know that we provide all our financial information on www.guidestar.org. For 2016, we raised $32,235 and we spent $27,676 and it is expected that 2017 will be similar.
Thank you everyone for your time reading my thoughts, your participation in our events and your continued support.

A St. Louis mom and her two daughters, one of whom has Down syndrome, traveled to Iceland to spread awareness about the genetic condition. Talking with over 150 people, including a genetic counselor, this family is making a difference.